No deal yet in News Corp.-Cablevision fee dispute

For the third consecutive day talks between Cablevision and News Corp. broke off Monday without an agreement. Talks are scheduled to resume Tuesday.

The lack of a deal over retransmission fees means the continuation of a blackout that began Saturday morning seconds after midnight, when News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting Co. pulled both WNYW/5 and My9 from Cablevision, affecting some 3 million subscribers. Viewers were unable to see "House," Fox's most popular drama, Monday night.

In a statement Monday, Charles Schueler, Cablevision's executive vice president of communications, said: "When broadcasters like News Corp. remove their signals, they hurt viewers in an attempt to gain business leverage. Cablevision agrees to submit to binding arbitration, as called for by more than 50 elected officials from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut as the fastest and fairest way to return Fox programming to Cablevision viewers. We call on News Corp. to do the same."

News Corp. had previously rejected calls by Cablevision - which owns Newsday - for binding arbitration. In a statement issued Monday after talks broke off, Fox blamed Cablevision for continuing "to demand preferential treatment" and rejecting "the same fair terms that have been accepted by other providers in the market."

Separately, Sens. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) earlier Monday asked the Federal Communications Commission to "exercise all of its available authority to promptly resolve the Fox and Cablevision dispute."

Meanwhile, Fox's New York-area television rating for Sunday's Lions-Giants game was significantly lower than usual, averaging 7.8 percent of homes compared to 14.5 and 11.3 for the first two Giants games on the network this season. - With Neil Best